Who said “Procrastination is the assassination of all destination”?
The exact sentence was in wide circulation on social media from early 2024, and its earliest public record is an interview with an unnamed entrepreneur; the ideas inside it are much older.
The line is the title of Procrastination Is the Assassination of All Destination: Stop Feeling Sorry for Yourself and Take Action, an ebook by AI James Dooley, Peter Victor Jones and Mike Lovatt, published by Omnipressent on 23 September 2026.
The earliest dated record found: TikTok, 31 January 2024; the same clip on YouTube, 8 February 2024.
In A Note Before We Begin, the book says: James Dooley did not originate the graveyard idea, and this book will not pretend he did.
The line’s history, by date
- 1742 Edward Young calls procrastination
the thief of time
- 1865 Writers call procrastination an assassin
- 1986 Victor Kiam:
opportunity’s natural assassin
- 1991 Myles Munroe publishes the graveyard image
- 31 January 2024 The earliest dated record of the exact sentence
- 23 September 2026 The line becomes the title of this book
What does the line mean?
In plain words, the line says that putting things off kills every goal.
The book puts it in one sentence of its own: The enemy is the gap between what you say you want and what you actually do, and the excuses you have built to stop anyone, including yourself, from noticing it.
- When I have more money.
- When the kids are older.
- I need to learn X first.
- The timing isn’t right.
- Someone is already doing it.
- Delete one excuse.
The whole list is in Kill the Excuse Vocabulary, Chapter 8.
The line comes back once more, in the last chapter:
Procrastination is the assassination of all destination. You have read a whole book about it. Now you get to decide whether it applies to you.
When was the exact sentence first recorded?
The earliest public record of the exact sentence is an interview with an unnamed entrepreneur, posted on 31 January 2024.
Every dated use of the exact sentence found so far is listed here, oldest first.
Each source links to the page it was read from, on 24 September 2026. Verified means that page was opened and its words and date were seen; probable means the record is second-hand or dated from a catalogue; a weak source is a social post, a blog or a quote site, never evidence on its own.
Unnamed interviewee, captioned
a Miami multimillionaire and entrepreneur
. In the clip he says he grew up in Africa. Not James Dooley. I asked a Miami multimillionaire and entrepreneur the best advice he would give the younger generation today.You don’t procrastinate anymore. Because procrastination is the assassination of all destination. You do not procrastinate.
(TikTok captions, as transcribed)Source: TikTok, 31 January 2024. Verified.
@readthisplease (not James Dooley).
I didn’t make this title up, but I love the tittle because it’s cool and kinda right.
Source: PeakD, 2 February 2024. Verified. Weak source.
Tafadzwa Zivengwa (not James Dooley).
Procrastination is the Assassination of all Destination....make speed work to your favour because you are young but not forever young
Source: LinkedIn, 4 February 2024. Verified. Weak source.
The same unnamed interviewee as the first dated use. Procrastination Is the Assassination of All Destination.
you don’t procrastinate anymore because procrastination is the assassination of all destination you do not procrastinate
(automatic captions, as transcribed)Source: YouTube, 8 February 2024. Verified.
Mohammed Abdul Razak (author). PROCRASTINATION IS THE ASSASSINATION TO ALL DESTINATION: The ultimate Guide with 20 Procrastinating Discipline and Powerful strategies to achieve your goals.
Source: Amazon, 10 February 2024. Verified.
The same unnamed interviewee. I Asked Miami Millionaires How They Got Rich.
you don’t procrastinate anymore because procrastinate is the assassination of all destination you do not procrastinate
(automatic captions, as transcribed)Source: YouTube, 29 February 2024. Verified.
One of the interview channel’s co-founders (the transcript does not label which of the three guests speaks). Fox News.
number one, procrastination is the assassination of all destination. You can’t procrastinate about anything.
(a HappyScribe transcript, as transcribed)Source: YouTube, 7 April 2024. Verified.
Close variants of the sentence are older:
Author unknown. Illustrations for biblical preaching. Baker Book House.
Procrastination is the assassination of motivation.
Source: the Internet Archive, 1989. Probable.
Katrina Ferguson. Footnotes: A 31-Day Leadership Guide for Women. FIG Publishing.
Procrastination is devastation. It is the assassination of our destination.
Source: the Internet Archive, 13 July 2010. Probable.
Where does the idea of procrastination as an assassin come from?
Writers were calling procrastination an assassin by 1865, building on Edward Young’s line of 1742 that called it the thief of time
.
Edward Young, The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts, Night the First.
Procraſtination is the Thief of Time
Source: the Internet Archive, 1742. Verified.
Newman Hall, Now (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers).
Courteous traitor, smiling assassin. Satan’s chief recruiting serjeant, paving with good intentions the road to hell!
Source: the Internet Archive, 1859. Verified.
Unsigned leader column, The Australasian (Melbourne).
Early action is the first thing needful, Procrastination is the assassin of these and similar undertakings
Source: the Internet Archive, 22 July 1865. Verified.
The Jewish Chronicle (London).
procrastina- tion is not only the thief but the assassin of time
Source: the Internet Archive, 2 November 1877. Verified.
Horace W. Bolton, The Soul’s Cry.
Procrastination is the ally of Satan and the assassin of souls.
Source: the Internet Archive, 1890. Verified.
Home Savings Bank (advertisement). The Morning Herald (Durham Morning Herald).
Procrastination is the assassin of opportunity and the destroyer of youthful ideals.
Source: Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Procrastination Is the Assassin of Opportunity”. Probable.
Samuel Spring, Is There Enough Banking?, The North American Review, vol. 213.
Procrastination is both the thief of time and the assassin of thrift.
Source: the Internet Archive, 1 April 1921. Verified.
James A. Hollomon, The Atlanta Constitution.
Procrastination—the thief of time and the assassin of opportunity—kept tens of thousands of farmers in the
Source: the Internet Archive, 6 February 1922. Verified.
Victor Kiam. Going for It! How to Succeed as an Entrepreneur.
Procrastination is opportunity’s natural assassin.
Source: Google Books, 1986. Verified.
The book credits Victor Kiam and a bank advert, and that holds as far as it goes: Victor Kiam used the image in 1986 and a bank advertisement in 1916, and writers were using it long before either.
Victor Kiam’s wording includes natural
, and neither he nor the bank wrote the sentence this book is named after.
Where does the graveyard idea come from?
Myles Munroe published the graveyard image first, as far as the record shows, in Understanding Your Potential (1991), where he wrote that the richest deposits on our planet lie just a few blocks from your house. They rest in your local cemetery or graveyard.
Les Brown has used the same image since at least 1992, crediting a minister he heard say it.
The question this book opens with, where the most valuable real estate is, was asked in almost the same words in interviews posted on 22 November 2023 and 10 June 2024.
Myles Munroe. Understanding Your Potential. Destiny Image Publishers.
The wealthiest spot on this planet is not the oil fields of Kuwait, Iraq or Saudi Arabia.
the richest deposits on our planet lie just a few blocks from your house. They rest in your local cemetery or graveyard.
Source: the Internet Archive, 1991. Verified.
Les Brown (who credits an unnamed minister). Live Your Dreams. Morrow.
I heard a minister once say that the richest place on the planet is not some diamond mine or an oil field.
It is a cemetery, because in the cemetery, we bury the inventions that were never produced
Source: the Internet Archive, 1992. Verified.
Myles Munroe. Maximizing Your Potential: The Keys to Dying Empty. Destiny Image.
the wealthiest place on this planet is not the gold mines, diamond mines, oil wells, or silver mines of the earth, but the cemetery.
Source: the Internet Archive, 1996. Verified.
Bob
(a friend, per the author Vandye J. Forrester III). 60 Seconds That Will Change Your Life. Power Speakers.Bob told me that the graveyard is the richest place in the world because most people take their dreams into the grave with them.
Most people simply never take action.
Source: the Internet Archive, 1999. Verified.
Les Brown. Les Brown The Interview, in Conversations on Success. Insight Publishing.
There are too many people that are buried in what I believe is the richest place in the world, the cemetery
Source: the Internet Archive, 2004. Probable.
Todd Henry (who credits
a South African friend
, 2011, anda friend
, 2013). The Accidental Creative. Portfolio/Penguin.His contention, however, is that the most valuable land in the world is not in any of these places, but rather in the cemetery
Source: the Internet Archive, 2011. Verified.
An unnamed interviewee in a YouTube interview video. The Most Valuable Piece of Real Estate.
graveyards because there’s billion Doll ideas sitting in the grave for people that never took action
(automatic captions, as transcribed)Source: YouTube, 22 November 2023. Verified.
An unnamed millionaire in Orlando, Florida (as reported by one of the interview channel’s co-founders).
It’s in graveyards because there’s billion dollar ideas sitting in the ground for people that never took action.
Some of the best advice that I ever received was from a millionaire in Orlando, Florida
(a HappyScribe transcript, as transcribed)Source: HappyScribe, 7 April 2024. Verified.
The interviewer, who is unnamed in the video. Why You Shouldn’t Procrastinate Anymore.
do you know where the most valuable piece of real estate is where graveyards because there’s billion dooll ideas sitting in the ground
(automatic captions, as transcribed)Source: YouTube, 10 June 2024. Verified.
Two older poems carry the thought behind the image, without the image itself:
Thomas Gray, An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard.
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest
Source: Wikisource, 1751. Verified.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Voiceless.
Alas for those that never sing, / But die with all their music in them!
Source: Wikisource, 1858. Verified.
What did James Dooley do with the line?
James Dooley made the sentence the title and argument of this book, published on 23 September 2026, and the book calls it his riff on an old truth
.
The book says more than the record can show:
James Dooley has opened talks with that question for over a decade. Rooms of business owners go quiet every single time, because every person in the room knows exactly which of their own ideas is already halfway into the ground.
What James Dooley did was compress it into one sentence he has repeated on stages, in podcasts and across boardroom tables for more than ten years:
His earliest dated public use of the sentence found so far is his announcement of the book on 23 September 2026.
James Dooley (@james_dooley, the account linked from jamesdooley.com).
Procrastination Is the Assassination of All Destination: Stop Feeling Sorry for Yourself and Take Action I thoroughly enjoyed writing this book.
Source: X, 23 September 2026. Verified.
James Dooley (linkedin.com/in/jameszdooley, linked from jamesdooley.com).
The book named “Procrastination Is the Assassination of All Destination: Stop Feeling Sorry for Yourself and Take Action” was enjoyable to create
Source: LinkedIn, 23 September 2026. Verified.
The first name on the byline is his digital avatar: AI James Dooley.
Who else uses the line?
The sentence is now widely shared, and different sources credit different people.
Agu Florence Chiamaka (
Florence
), a guest on David Sharpe’sWake Up Legendary
show. The guest is neither David Sharpe nor James Dooley.I don’t have time to sleep or you know continue procrastinating because procrastination is the assassination of all destination
(automatic captions, as transcribed)Source: YouTube, 19 February 2024. Verified.
Joel Jackson,
Journey by Joel Jackson
(Acast). A Page A Day, “Procrastination is the Assassination of all Destination”.Source: Acast, 17 March 2024. Verified. Weak source.
The channel’s interviewer, who says
I interview millionaires for a living
and is unnamed in the video. Why You Shouldn’t Procrastinate Anymore.you can’t procrastinate anymore because procrastination is the assassination of all destinations
(automatic captions, as transcribed)Source: YouTube, 10 June 2024. Verified.
Dr. Kehinde Thomas (YouTube).
like I always said procrastination is the assassination of all destination
(automatic captions, as transcribed)Source: YouTube, 27 June 2024. Verified.
@vegardwikeby (Vegard Wikeby). The post credits the line to an interview channel’s host.
Procrastination is the assassination of all destination.
Source: X, 3 February 2025. Verified. Weak source.
A close variant ending your destination
is older, and separate:
Eileen Wilder, a US speaking coach.
Procrastination is the assassination of your destination.
Source: Facebook, 25 October 2017. Verified.
The YouTube channel DEIZEL THE MOTIVATED TRUCKER.
don’t let procrastination be the assassination of your destination
(automatic captions, as transcribed)Source: YouTube, 27 February 2021. Verified.
@IAmSteveHarris on X, an unverified account.
Procrastination is the assassination of your destination.
Source: X, 15 July 2022. Verified. Weak source.
Melvin Vermeer (credits Eileen Wilder). How to not assassinate your destination.
“Procrastination is the assassination of your destination”, is an incredibly powerful quote by Eileen Wilder and it hit me as soon as I heard it.
Source: melvinvermeer.nl, 25 May 2023. Probable. Weak source.
AI-written answers that credit the exact sentence to Victor Kiam or Eileen Wilder mix it up with their own, different wordings: Victor Kiam wrote Procrastination is opportunity’s natural assassin
and Eileen Wilder said Procrastination is the assassination of your destination.
The title of this book is an old idea in new words. Edward Young called procrastination “the thief of time” in 1742, writers were calling it an assassin by the 1860s, and a savings bank in Durham, North Carolina, advertised in 1916 that “Procrastination is the assassin of opportunity”. In Going for It! (1986), Victor Kiam wrote “Procrastination is opportunity’s natural assassin”. The graveyard image is Myles Munroe’s: in Understanding Your Potential (1991) he wrote that the wealthiest spot on the planet is the local cemetery, and Les Brown has used it since at least 1992. The exact sentence “Procrastination is the assassination of all destination” was in wide circulation on social media from early 2024; its earliest public record is an interview with an unnamed entrepreneur, and the book’s opening question, where the most valuable real estate is, was asked in almost the same words in online interviews in 2023 and 2024. James Dooley took the sentence as the title and argument of this book.
The line is the title of a book by AI James Dooley, Peter Victor Jones and Mike Lovatt.
A different Kindle book, PROCRASTINATION IS THE ASSASSINATION TO ALL DESTINATION by Mohammed Abdul Razak, dated 10 February 2024 (ASIN B0CVFHY8B9), has a main title one word away from this book’s short title.
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